OpenAI’s GPT-5 Will Come With PhD-Level Intelligence

The next major upgrade for ChatGPT has been rumored for a very long time. GPT-5, or whatever it will be named, has been talked about several times in the past few months. But recently, OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati has provided some additional clarity on its capabilities.

During an interview with Dartmouth Engineering that was posted on X, Murati explained the jump from GPT-4 to GPT-5 as someone growing from a high-schooler up to university.

“If you look at the trajectory of improvement, systems like GPT-3 were maybe toddler-level intelligence,” Murati says. “And then systems like GPT-4 are more like smart high-schooler intelligence. And then, in the next couple of years, we’re looking at Ph.D. intelligence for specific tasks. Things are changing and improving pretty rapidly.”

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Will GPT-5 Really Have PhD Level Knowledge?

During the interview, Murati was asked about the timetable, asking if it would come in 2025. She suggested that it might be true, and then clarified that it’d be in a year and a half. If that happens to be true, GPT-5 might not be released until late 2025 or early 2026. Some people might be disappointed to know that the next iteration of ChatGPT is years away.

The initial rumors about the launch time of GPT-5 were that it would be launched in late 2023. And then, when that didn’t happen, reports suggested that it would come out later this year. However, that turned out to be GPT-4o, which was an impressive upgrade, but it wasn’t the kind of leap that Murati is referencing.

Speaking of intelligence, it confirms what has been rumored about GPT-5 in the past. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott claims that the upcoming AI systems will be “capable of passing Ph.D. exams” thanks to better memory and reasoning operations.

Murati clarified that the “Ph.D.-level” intelligence only applies to some tasks. “These systems are already human-level in specific tasks, and, of course, in a lot of tasks, they’re not,” she says.

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OpenAI Adds Former Head Of NSA To Its Board Of Directors

OpenAI has appointed Paul M. Nakasone, who is a retired general of the US Army and a former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), to its board of directors. Nakasone was nominated to lead the NSA by former POTUS Donald Trump. He directed the agency from 2018 until February 2024. 

Before Nakasone parted ways with the NSA, he wrote an op-ed supporting the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the surveillance program that was reauthorized in April.

The company says Nakasone will be joining its Safety and Security Committee, which was announced in May and is led by CEO Sam Altman, “as a first priority.” Nakasone will “also contribute to OpenAI’s efforts to better understand how AI can be used to strengthen cybersecurity by quickly detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats.”